The Invention of Design: A Twentieth-Century History

A critical history of the idea of design-and its utopian promise

Design has penetrated every dimension of contemporary society, from classrooms to statehouses to corporate boardrooms. It''s seen as a kind of mega-power, one that can solve all our problems and elevate our experiences to make a more beautiful, more functional world.

But there''s a backstory here. In The Invention of Design, designer and historian Maggie Gram investigates how, over the twentieth century, our economic hopes, fears, and fantasies shaped the idea of "design"-then repeatedly redefined it. Nearly a century ago, resistance to New Deal-era government intervention helped transform design from an idea about aesthetics into one about function. And at century''s end, the dot-com crash brought us "design thinking": the idea that design methodology can solve any problem, small or large. To this day, design captures imaginations as a tool for fixing market society''s broken parts from within, supposedly enabling us to thrive within capitalism''s sometimes violent constraints.

A captivating critical history, The Invention of Design shows how design became the hero of many of our most hopeful stories-dreams, fantasies, utopias-about how we might better live in a modern world.

• | Author: Maggie Gram
• | Publisher: Basic Books
• | Publication Date: Jun 26, 2025
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Hardback
• | ISBN-13: 9781541600638
• | ISBN-10: 1541600630